‘Scorpions’ Found On Venus?

Could Venus hold life? The terribly hot surfaces of Venus have always been know to be arid and desolate. One scientist however, believes that there might be alien creatures who are able to survive such extreme temperatures. His proof? 30 year old photos of the landing of a Soviet probe in Venus. According to Leonid Ksanfomaliti of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the probe may have captured the first images of alien creepy-crawlies!

The research paper written by Ksanfomaliti focuses on the 126-minute video that was shot by the probe upon landing. In his paper, he mentions “a shape shifting disk,” “a black patch” and something resembling a “scorpion” which all exhibited signs of life.

Are we still alone in the universe? Well, if a Russian scientist is right, a Soviet probe already solved one of humanity’s greatest riddles by discovering alien life on a neighboring planet – three decades ago.

­While generations of stargazers dreamed of little green men on Mars, a recently published article in the Russian Solar System Research (Astronomicheskii Vestnik) magazine says a Soviet probe may have actually captured images of alien life on Earth’s scorching sister Venus back in 1982.

The article, penned by Leonid Ksanfomaliti of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, presents a detailed analysis of a 126-minute panoramic video recording made by the Venus-13 landing probe.

“Without going into the present conception that life would be impossible on Venus given its conditions, we can take a long shot and say that the given morphological characteristics allow us to assume that certain objects [registered on the planet’s surface] have qualities of living beings,” the researcher claims.

The article mentions three distinct objects: “a shape shifting disk,” “a black patch” and something resembling a “scorpion” which all exhibited signs of life.

Professor Ksanfomaliti said the objects, which measured between 0.1-0.5 meters, were constantly moving over time, making it difficult to explain them away as mere technical glitches.

Most interesting was the appearance of the ‘scorpion,’ whose movements were recorded a full 26 minutes before disappearing.

Ksanfomaliti also says the probe’s noisy touchdown on Venus’ surface probably scared off other otherworldly critters, which explains why nothing similar was captured in subsequent recordings.

The scientist had an inkling the video showed something potentially spectacular back in the 1980s, but opted to remain silent at the time. But based on a new wave of research dedicated to Earth-sized planets outside of our solar system, Ksanfomaliti decided to mull over the old data.

He plans on publishing further results of his findings in upcoming articles.

However, Aleksandr Bazilevsky the laboratory chief from the Russian Academy of Science’s Geochemistry Institute, says that while Ksanfomaliti is “a true, serious scientist,” his theory is “flawed.”

“The life forms we are familiar with are protein-based and they would never survive on Venus,” Bazilevsky says.

“We know life forms capable of surviving at pressure of 100 bars on the seabed, and creatures living at the maximum temperature of +150 C in underwater volcanoes. But the temperature on Venus exceeds +500 C.”

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See now this is interesting, I’ve always had my own thoughts about venus containing life, it makes sense to me to be honest, it’s got liquids and minerals which can mix and make a veritable primordial soup of their own and on top of it all, being that close to the sun has got to provide a hell of a lot of energy.

Add on top of it all a cave system and you could probably get some pretty strange and decent life going. Extremophiles have proven again and again that life is a lot more resilient than we give it credit, we’ve seen life living at the bottom of an ocean, in above boiling water, in nuclear reactors even living on arsenic.

My question to you? Whats so strange about life living in an ultra high evergy environment with a high density atmosphere compared to what we’ve already seen?

Kevin

^^ I agree with The Oshmar.

We are slowly starting to see trends of life that is flourishing in once thought “impossible” life scenarios. I don’t see why we should think that life MUST existence within a certain parameters that we hold in place such as temperature, pressure, and oxygen breathing.

that’s the beauty of life- it can adapt to almost any situation: So why should Venus be any different? I mean we found life living and FEEDING off of arsenic- pure poison to carbon-based lifeforms. Why should we expect that all living things must conform to our understandings of how things work.

As for this image and study of Venus, its very shocking, and I would absolutely love to hear more about it. We might just find that alien life is closer in our neighborhood then we might think. We already know extremophiles exist in parts of the oceans with no light, near freezing temperatures, and pressures that can crush just about anything. But there it is, a whole untouched ecosystem; and not just one species, but hundreds of them. Because of this, it would be insulting not to suggest that life exists as well on Enceladus, Europa, Titan, and/or any other moon in our solar system. If evidence suggests “oceans” beneath the thick, ever-changing icey crust of Europa and Enceladus, would one be wrong to assume that live exists there as well.

This is the type of stuff we should be focusing on as man prepares to enter into space with a more known presence.

Cleveland_Steamer

I think our narrow, closed-minded idea of life is a downside when it comes to looking for, and recognizing alien life forms.

Who’s to say a life form couldn’t survive in such conditions? I just think when it comes to alien life, we have to have the most open of minds of what it could look like or be.

Henry

I am forced to agree wiht the theme of this thread. We are making assumptions based upon very limited experience of one envrionment.

The Oshmar

It would be interesting to note that any life that is able to survive on venus would probably consider earths environment too hostile for any known life (venus life) to survive, they’d probably just freeze to death or suffocate.

I highly doubt that the surface of Venus contains any life. It doesn’t have all that much to do with the the extremely hot temperatures or the tremendous air pressure. Rather, the surface and even the mantle contain no water at all (or exceedingly little of it). Here’s a good article which describes the surface of Venus; the author does hold out hope that Venus’ atmosphere/clouds may contain life. The article is below:

I always find it interesting that life has the apparent “need” for water, their is always the possibility that life on other worlds might find another liquid to latch onto to be their main form of hydration, for instance here with Venus, perhaps rather then water they used another liquid like sulfuric acid which is naturally abundant on Venus and rather then oxygen they could simply use carbon dioxide, another abundant resource on Venus.

In short, yes, other liquids might work; however, I do not think sulfuric acid is one of those liquids.

As for carbon dioxide use–there are organisms on earth that do not rely on oxygen.

Bruce

I’m inclined to be open-minded about life forms in any environment. The essence of life for me is energy utilization (of any kind @ any temperature) used to actuate changes-of-state in sub-atomic, atomic, molecular or larger matter. The energy utilization is the driving force for life (“life force”?) and the changes of state are the foundation for differentiation and evolution. By my definition we should expect to find life accidentally evolved anywhere where a steady energy difference is observed and the passage of time is on the order of 10^6+ years.

http://elander-anthony.blogspot.com/ Anthony

I think the key issue in addition to energy utilization is the maintenance of stable bonds. That is where water comes in–it helps organisms maintain bonds between the various units in their cell and between groups of cells (for multi-cellular organisms).

Anyway, to sum up–it appears that water is a great solvent and allows organisms to maintain covalent and non-covalent bonds. In order to survive, a life form would need to use some type of solvent which is adept at forming both covalent and non-covalent bonds. Water works for earthly life forms. Some other liquids might work as well, though more research needs to be done on the subject.

Of course, I might not be correct. So, perhaps someone else can chime in with regards to this subject. Perhaps there is another way for an organism to maintain stability without using a solvent of any type?